In The News: 2,000 frozen eggs and embryos potentially “compromised”

Cleveland’s University Hospitals just notified more than 700 patients that their frozen eggs and/or embryos might be damaged. Apparently, the temperature of their cryo tank rose to unacceptable high levels overnight last weekend.

There was nobody present at the time to stop it, or fix it, or do something, anything. It wasn’t until the next morning someone came into the office and heard the alarm go off. What a massive screw up…

They don’t know if it was a mechanical failure of the cryo tank or if it was due to a human error.

All samples have since been moved to a working freezer, but that must be of little consolation for all affected patients. Can you imagine if it was you? That’s just terrible 🙁

For now, they say they can’t even be sure how many embryos are no longer viable, but it doesn’t look good…

“Some samples that were unfrozen for scheduled procedures this week were not viable.”

They say that the only way to find out if the frozen eggs or embryos are still viable is to thaw them, but also mention they can’t be refrozen afterward. I’m not sure why exactly.

A hotline has been set up to take calls and answer questions (216-286-9740).

Tip: don’t read the comments on these articles mentioned above. You’ll just end up angry or sad.

Update: Can you believe it? The same thing happened in San Fransisco’s Pacific Fertility Center, supposedly on the same day as the Cleveland incident. The liquid nitrogen failure affected 400 patients. How awful 🙁